# Is the oil era coming to an end? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 11, 2016, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-oil-era-coming-to-an-end/742815 "2016-01-11T16:09:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2016, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-oil-era-coming-to-an-end/742815/41 "2016-01-17T23:28:54Z")
You sound huffy–as if I have some sort of opposition to alternatives. Not so. As I’ve said many times, it’s just a financial decision for me. My only position is that the free market will drive what happens over anything else, including altruism toward future generations based on AGW concerns. If one is opposed to the use of oil, wherever and however it is used, cheap oil should be a concern because cheap oil will slow down interest in alternatives. For example, if you think Nuclear or solar needs to be promoted to make electricity to power vehicles, then cheap oil is your enemy–not your friend. But have at it investing wherever you like. [It’s your money.](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-solar-stocks-oil-idUSKCN0UR1IW20160113) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2016, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-oil-era-coming-to-an-end/742815/42 "2016-01-18T00:15:08Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > You sound huffy–as if I have some sort of opposition to alternatives. Not so. As I’ve said many times, it’s just a financial decision for me. > > My only position is that the free market will drive what happens over anything else, including altruism toward future generations based on AGW concerns. > > If one is opposed to the use of oil, wherever and however it is used, cheap oil should be a concern because cheap oil will slow down interest in alternatives. > > For example, if you think Nuclear or solar needs to be promoted to make electricity to power vehicles, then cheap oil is your enemy–not your friend. > > But have at it investing wherever you like. [It’s your money.](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-solar-stocks-oil-idUSKCN0UR1IW20160113) As the guy being interviewed points out, “ **in the short run** ” fear will get that sentiment as Shawn Kravetz, president of Boston-based Esplanade Capital explained, but as the Bloomberg report showed it is not just the price of oil that is driving the deployment of solar power and others. The point indeed is that this situation will not be a permanent one and the article also supports what I cited early, solar power does not depend as before with the price of oil. Again you are only pointing at the problems that are already taken into account, the change will take place faster the sooner we get rid of the denier Republicans in congress. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-oil-era-coming-to-an-end/742815/43 "2016-01-22T00:01:39Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Again you are only pointing at the problems that are already taken into account, the change will take place faster the sooner we get rid of the denier Republicans in congress. Wait…what have they to do with the free market and oil v alternatives? Are you now suggesting that cheap oil DOES hurt alternatives, and that therefore we need to get rid of denier Republicans so we can artificially alter prices by making oil more expensive or subsidizing alternatives? ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-oil-era-coming-to-an-end/742815/44 "2016-01-22T00:05:41Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > There is still a big push for solar power. Given history of technology, the Solar Power will replace fossil fuels in 2040s and 2050s. Not earlier. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-oil-era-coming-to-an-end/742815/45 "2016-01-22T01:53:19Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Wait…what have they to do with the free market and oil v alternatives? > **[The Political History of Cap and Trade](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-political-history-of-cap-and-trade-34711212/)** > > How an unlikely mix of environmentalists and free-market conservatives hammered out the strategy known as cap-and-trade > [@](#): > > The basic premise of cap-and-trade is that government doesn’t tell polluters how to clean up their act. Instead, it simply imposes a cap on emissions. Each company starts the year with a certain number of tons allowed—a so-called right to pollute. The company decides how to use its allowance; it might restrict output, or switch to a cleaner fuel, or buy a scrubber to cut emissions. If it doesn’t use up its allowance, it might then sell what it no longer needs. Then again, it might have to buy extra allowances on the open market. Each year, the cap ratchets down, and the shrinking pool of allowances gets costlier. As in a game of musical chairs, polluters must scramble to match allowances to emissions. > > Getting all this to work in the real world required a leap of faith. The opportunity came with the 1988 election of George H.W. Bush. EDF president Fred Krupp phoned Bush’s new White House counsel—Boyden Gray—and suggested that the best way for Bush to make good on his pledge to become the “environmental president” was to fix the acid rain problem, and the best way to do that was by using the new tool of emissions trading. Gray liked the marketplace approach, and even before the Reagan administration expired, he put EDF staffers to work drafting legislation to make it happen. The immediate aim was to break the impasse over acid rain. But global warming had also registered as front-page news for the first time that sweltering summer of 1988; according to Krupp, EDF and the Bush White House both felt from the start that emissions trading would ultimately be the best way to address this much larger challenge. > [@](#): > > Almost 20 years since the signing of the Clean Air Act of 1990, the cap-and-trade system continues to let polluters figure out the least expensive way to reduce their acid rain emissions. As a result, the law costs utilities just $3 billion annually, not $25 billion, according to a recent study in the Journal of Environmental Management; by cutting acid rain in half, it also generates an estimated $122 billion a year in benefits from avoided death and illness, healthier lakes and forests, and improved visibility on the Eastern Seaboard. (Better relations with Canada? Priceless.) > > No one knows whether the United States can apply the system as successfully to the much larger problem of global warming emissions, or at what cost to the economy. Following the American example with acid rain, Europe now relies on cap-and-trade to help about 10,000 large industrial plants find the most economical way of reducing their global warming emissions. If Congress approves such a system in this country—the House had approved the legislation as we went to press—it could set emissions limits on every fossil-fuel power plant and every manufacturer in the nation. Consumers might also pay more to heat and cool their homes and drive their cars—all with the goal of reducing global warming emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels over the next ten years. But we know what took place, except you of course. 🙂 Powerful interests funded tea partier and other arch conservatives that turned cap-n-trade into the work of the devil, that as an after effect the Republicans also became the denier party is what the powerful interests wanted and got. > **[Climate of Doubt | FRONTLINE](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/climate-of-doubt/?)** > > FRONTLINE explores the massive shift in public opinion on climate change. > [@](#): > > Four [8 now] years ago, climate change was a hot issue and politicians from both sides seemed poised to act. Today public opinion on the climate issue has cooled considerably. Politicians either ignore it or proclaim their skepticism. What’s behind this massive reversal? FRONTLINE goes inside the organizations that fought the scientific establishment to shift the direction of the climate debate. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Are you now suggesting that cheap oil DOES hurt alternatives, and that therefore we need to get rid of denier Republicans so we can artificially alter prices by making oil more expensive or subsidizing alternatives? A bit of column A and a bit of column B. It would be better if we should add the real price to our emissions for using the atmosphere as a sewer. And the free marked should be used too for the solutions indeed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-oil-era-coming-to-an-end/742815.md?page=2)